Dancing out of July 2018

July is mostly marked in history because of heat, heat and some more heat. The unlikely heat wave with 37 degrees was one of the most talked about topics in our country. And it was what influenced my month the most I’d say. It was harder to focus. Heat is not my thing. Neither is it Merijn’s.

The Witchwood Crown (The Last King of Osten Ard 1.2) by Tad Williams – 3 stars

Foundryside (The Founders 1) by Robert Jackson Bennett – 4,5 stars

The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland – For a Little While (Fairyland 0.5) by Catherynne M. Valente – 4 stars (novella)

Fool’s Errand (Tawny Man 1) by Robin Hobb – 5 stars

Despite the long list there were a bunch of comics in there again. With the heat I’ve just found it hard to focus. Plus we went away twice which limited my normal reading time severely. There were also 3 books over 500 pages.

# Unread BooksTotal unread books on shelf end of June – 226 – 3 Unhauled Books
Read in July (that count) – 4
Books bought/received in July (no ebooks/classics) – 15 Total unread books on shelf end of July– 234

# Unread EbooksTotal unread ebooks at the end of June – 23Ebooks read in July – 5 Ebooks bought/Received in July – 7Total unread ebooks end of July – 24

# Beat the Backlist
Backlist books read in July – 15Total – 97

# Library Love ChallengeLibrary books read in July– 10Total – 53/48

As mentioned in my wrap up of June I am participating in the Throwback Bingo by the facebook group Life & Lit in July and August. Below you can see the bingo card and how I have been doing so far.

Free Square (Anything You Want) – The Many Worlds of Albie BrightA Sequel You Forgot to Read – A Closed and Common OrbitA New Release (’17/’18) – Grace and FuryA Book From A Movie You Liked – ZooA Recent TBR Addition – A Bad Spell for the Worst WitchA Favorite From Your Childhood – The BFGThe Book That Made You Love Reading – The BFGFae – The Witchwood Crown part 2Book From the 00’s – Fool’s Errand

⌘ The first full week of July wasn’t all that grand for me body wise. I forgot my meds a few times so that made me feel shit. Then I dropped a heavy wooden board on my big toe and badly bruised it. I swear, for the first hour I thought it might have been broken. It hurt so much. With my other foot I stepped on a block. Not my week.

⌘ Luckily Merijn could go to his grandparents that weekend and stay the night so I had a bit of a break.

⌘ I’ve never gotten as many likes on a tweet as I did on this announcement for a bartimaeus readalong 😀 Will you be participating? I’ll be posting all of the information tomorrow!

⌘ For a week Merijn and I went to my parents. Maarten has to work so much that we can’t make it as much as we should so I went with just Merijn this time. My parents really enjoyed all the time with Merijn as did he. We took the ferry to Vlissingen and back, shopped, played, walked (merijn on his walk motor). So good times.

⌘ We went to Deventer and to the Fantasy Meet and Fair Coevorden this month. About both a blog post will appear.

⌘ We had a play date with my friend and her twins and she took some amazing pictures of the two of us. ❤

⌘ The Netherlands and surrounding countries had a heat wave. It is very uncommon for here for it to be above 30 degrees for so long and it is said it will remain until half August. We even had days of 37 degrees. I’ll have melted a hundred times over by then. You can imagine that with a toddler, yeah not much fun.

⌘ Husband had unexpected extra few days off and so we went for an extra trip to my parents. We drove through the heat twice and had a puking toddler in the back. Fun. But we had a good time there. It wasn’t quite as hot there near the sea and with the wind. We visited Middelburg (and I visited their book store which I will do a post on at some point this year) and Terneuzen. Of course there was book buying happening, including my husband who got some bind-up Suske and Wiske’s for really cheap.

⌘ Zoo / Season 1 / Ep 4 – 13 / Finished
I have various thoughts. Mostly good. Though I’m not sure how I feel about that ending to be honest. But it sure beats the book haha.

⌘ Agents of Shield / Season 2 / Ep 21 – 22 / Finished
⌘ Agents of Shield / Season 3 / Ep 1 – 17
Still going strong. Though I’ll be honest and say I struggle a little more with this season than I did with the first two.

⌘ Falling Skies / Season 5 / Ep 1- 6
I could have done without the revenge Pope plot there. Really. Stupid diversion of the actual plot. I thought we were done with the shitty Pope story lines anway?

⌘ The Incredibles / Movie
I think I saw bits and pieces of it way back but now I can really say I have seen the movie. I liked it. I’m not amazed but I liked it well enough. And I am looking forward to seeing the new movie once it comes out on dvd.

⌘ World Cup 2018 / Soccer/Football
So sad Belgium didn’t make it to the finals…

⌘ Tour de France 2018
In the background I watched a lot of Tour de France. It was hard to focus on it though with Merijn running around and struggling with the heat. So yeah I don’t feel like I got a lot of what happened.

⌘ I’m working on a readalong as you can see and my post about that will go up with details on August 6th, so tomorrow. Mark down the dates on your calendar~!

⌘ As this posts I’ll be going to the Deventer book market so uhm expect some more books?

⌘ From August 6th to the 13th I’ll be participating in the Make Me Read It Read-a-thon. I will for sure be reading Vicious and Strange the Dreamer and if I have some time left that week I’ll be reading The Cruel Prince as well. 🙂

⌘ The rest of the month I’ll be focusing on some review copies like Sea Fire, Tempest and Slaughter and The Demon Race that I need to read. And I would also like to read the first Fairyland book and Equal Rites and The Silver Tide (so I can finally finish that trilogy). And then I also have the buddy read for The Record of a Spaceborn Few coming up and maybe I can squeeze in Tawny Man 2.

The Sunday post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. This is a bit of a recap post of the week (or month) where you can link to the posts you made this week, share news and wrap up your reading. I will also link up with Monthly Wrap up from Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction.

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32 thoughts on “Dancing out of July 2018”

Aww, thank you for the shoutout! ♥ I’m sorry this wasn’t totally your month with the issues with your meds and the heat and all! I hope it starts looking up in August. I feel you on how the heat can make it really hard to focus. I used to read more in the summer, but the older I get, I have a hard time doing much of ANYTHING in the summer because I just want to lay in bed in front of the air conditioner and sleep, lmao.

I hate it when it’s super hot. Hope you guys get a break from the heat before mid- August! And cute pics. 🙂

I’ve only watched S1 of Zoo but I liked it. I should jump into S2 at some point. And I did enjoy watching the World Cup, although I missed a lot of the games- I finally got to watch some towards the end.

That heat! And it’s still hot today. We were in England for part of it, where it was (a tiny) bit cooler, especially on the south coast, but it was still hot. We travelled back to The Netherlands on the hottest day of the year – it was ridiculous!

I just loved seeing the photos of Merijn and your husband. It looks like you have had a nice month of visiting. I am sorry to hear that you injured your toe. I hate it when I do something like that. You got a lot of great reading done in July. I hope August is good for you as well and maybe it will cool off just a bit as well.

I don’t think the ending of Zoo was supposed to be the end? I had the feeling that they’d planned on another season, and then it got canceled. Otherwise that was just mean!

The heat has been just out of control, and I’m so glad I missed two weeks of it while back home, but the past week has been absolutely awful, and there’s no escape from the heat. I can’t function. But I’m not really looking forward to the colder, rainy weather that’s coming, either. 😂 I guess you’ll be happy, though! I hope August is an easier month for you, especially once the heat wave breaks.

Yeay~ So glad you are joining in. I’ve been meaning to host a readalong and when I saw it was 15 years of The Amulet of Samarkand in September I knew it just had to be this series. I’ve never reviewed this series because I always struggled with what to say but that was before my real blogging day so hopefully I can gather my thoughts a bit better this time around.

Yes! I feel the same way– I always struggle to write reviews for books I truly enjoy. It’s super frustrating. I feel like all my 5-star books are unreviewed. 😦 Hopefully you’ll be inspired this time around. I’m looking forward to participating in the read along. 🙂

For not being able to focus well, your July was awesome as far as books, blog, and family time. I always enjoy seeing your photos and your instagram is beautiful too. As I’m typing this, we are about to start a tropical heat wave here–the humidity coupled with heat makes everything so much harder to do so I know what you mean.

Welcome to A Dance with Books

I’m Annemieke. A Dutch book blogger who blogs in English. But I’m also a wife and mom. I prefer to read fantasy (adult and young adult) books but sometimes I deviate from that genre a little. Feel free to leave me a comment or contact me through other social media accounts. I always welcome a chat.

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